Naming anything in life is exceptionally difficult , especially if they happen to be your children or a company you are forming, as you are likely to be totally accountable for that name . Fortunately I was not alone in either of these tasks, I had a husband to be co-blamed for the names of my children and a co-founder who is jointly accountable for naming U&B 🙂
When it came to choosing a name for our company, we wanted something to break away from the “dev house” and “agency” stereotypes (as we don’t believe we fall into either category) and wanted a name to define what we were about and where we come from, which in a nutshell is about marrying technology with beautiful visual design.
Looking back through both of our careers, our two favourite quotes are:
“It’s technology married with liberal arts and humanities that makes your heart sink” Steve Jobs and “Have nothing in your house that you do not know to be useful, or believe to be beautiful” by William Morris
Merging those two quotes gave us the name we wanted “Useful and Beautiful” – creating mobile solutions that are both centred at the heart of core functionality and beautiful to the eye.
All blog posts and opinion pieces that follow will be about what we find to be useful and beautiful, such as the latest tech trends that I chat about regularly on SAFM to opinion consumer pieces that I will be publishing in local and international press releases.
Enjoy.